Month: February 2016

I live a charmed life. I don’t have much of anything, but I have everything. Family. Friends. A puppy dog.

A tiny cottage. A back yard. A screened-in porch. A vegetable garden in my front yard where I piddle and clip off broccoli heads or pull up carrots or onions or garlic or ginger.

I pack the garden’s bounty into the square white pock-marked chest freezer in the garage.

A crock pot, admittedly seasoned tan around the bottom, stays within reach for gently cooking sausages or sauces or soup. Or an occasional rump roast. Or pork chops.

A washing machine and dryer accommodate my love of fresh bed linens. When I stretch out on the clean sheets and I am not hurting anywhere, I say out loud, “Thank you, God.”

I have boots and long underwear for winter. Sandals and shorts for summer. And containers of homemade mosquito repellant in make-do spray bottles at every door.

I experienced West Nile Virus in 2012. I am more afraid of WNV than I am of a criminal. I might be able to talk the criminal out of hurting me. The mosquito is hard headed and won’t listen.

The repellant is easy to make: I throw a bunch of fresh basil–stems, bad leaves and all–in water for several days. When the water stinks brown, I strain it, and mix cheap vodka and a few drops of patchouli oil into it.

I struggle some days between loyalty to my Mac or loyalty to my garden gloves. I have, on occasion, mopped the kitchen floor to resist giving in to either end of the seesaw.

And, I am quite comfortable wearing no make up and the grubbiest looking clothes I have; I have lots of grubby clothes. But, if I am going “out,” eyeliner is a strong must.

It has taken me a very long time to understand what a charmed life is.

Actually, the whole thing is a work in progress: I am an 8 on the Enneagram, strong-willed, articulate, and a seasoned arguer—I practiced law in rural north Mississippi long before the MS Rules of Evidence were codified. All of these characteristics and experiences, arguably admirable on the surface, have, however, worked somewhat to my disadvantage in accepting a charmed life and cooperating with it, for a charmed life simply refuses to allow overachieving and/or insistence on its way.